Did I Really Eat Dog in Mexico?

Did I Really Eat Dog in Mexico? February 13, 2017 · 6 min. read

They say "When in Rome do as the Romans do", so the same logic should also apply to Mexico, right?

That was what I was thinking when I sat down in a classy Mexican restaurant a few weeks ago. The following morning would be the wedding -- the main reason I went to Mexico -- so this meal was to get acquainted with traditional Mexican drinks and dishes. As I was pouring over the menu trying to decipher it, the man beside me pointed out the "Tacos" section. I knew what a taco was, so it seemed like a safe place to order from. He then ran through the types of tacos on the menu. One was beef, one was shrimp and the other was dog.

I had to stop him. "Dog? Really?" Yes. It was three dog tacos. I decided then that if dog was what was commonly served in Mexico, then it's something I should try. When in Rome, right?

After about 15 minutes, the waiter brought the tacos with a side of salad and a bowl full of vegetables. I quickly took a picture of them and put it out onto Facebook, with the caption "Guess what kind of taco I'm having!?". Very quickly it was discovered it was dog, and my friends and family were a little less than happy with me. One comment summarized what everybody was feeling: "I think I'm going to woof."

The tacos were actually very good. The meat inside was kind of like pulled pork -- tender and stringy. The sauce was tangy and delicious, and the carrots and lettuce were very crunchy. In one of the tacos I found a bone, but that happens with any kind of meat, so I wasn't too put off by it. All in all, it was so good that I considered ordering seconds.

After supper we went out to the bar and I met some members of the bridal party. They were all about my age and we got talking about how I was enjoying Mexico. Quickly it came up what I had for supper and everybody wanted to know more about it. Nobody in the bridal party, it seems, had ever tried dog.

This seemed very strange to me, but then again I have never had tuna so it's not impossible to have something nobody else has ever had.

The night ended and I went back to my hotel. The following morning I woke up to my phone alarm, and noticed I had a message from one of my friends on Facebook. She asked me where I had found dog on the menu in Mexico, since she has never seen it.

Normally I would dismiss such messages. It was only because I highly respect this person (she's one of my old high school teachers) and because she has probably spent more time in Mexico over the years than I have in Canada, that I wanted to give her an answer.

I closed Facebook and went to the pictures on my phone. I found the pictures of the tacos and checked their geo-located position. I then opened it on Google Maps, found the restaurant, went to their website and found their menu. I copied the title of all the tacos, popped them into Google Translate and saw beef, shrimp and...

Duck.

What!? I couldn't believe it! Surely it translated wrong! I isolated all the words from the title and translated them all individually. There was no mistaking it. "Pato" means "duck" and "perro" means "dog". Sure, duck is a more exotic meat, but it isn't unheard of to eat. Dog, on the other hand, is extremely taboo in the West. How could I have made this mistake?

I then thought back to the previous night to how I learned what the taco's meat was. I remembered that I was told it was dog by a man who had a thick Spanish accent. It's possible that when this gentleman said "duck", he gave it a harder "oh" sound, and it came out like "dock". "Dock" could have easily been misheard of as "dog", since a "dock taco" wouldn't make any sense.

So, for any of my friends or family thinking I ate dog, I'm sorry, I had duck instead. My bad.

In the words of the groom though, "When it comes to Mexico tacos, unless you see them cut the meat yourself, you never know what you might get." So, there's still a possibility, right?